It might sound crazy to some, launching an entirely new product line while your flagship business has shed two-thirds of its paper value. But Howie Liu, the founder and CEO of Airtable, suggests it’s the sanest thing he could do.
The company that investors valued at $11.7 billion during the zero-interest-rate fervor of 2021 now trades on secondary markets at roughly $4 billion. But Airtable has raised $1.4 billion total, and Liu says the company still has half of that in the bank while “throwing off cash.” The valuation collapse affected investor returns and employee stock options, but didn’t undermine the business itself.
Liu’s response is to launch Superagent, an AI agent he suggests could eventually eclipse Airtable itself. It’s Airtable’s first standalone product in its 13-year history, and captures both where the company is headed and the reality of the current AI moment: every serious software player is racing to prove they can deliver on agents.
To understand what makes this move especially interesting, consider what Airtable is: a no-code platform that democratizes app-building. It’s essentially a supercharged database that lets anyone create custom software tailored to their workflows. The company now employs more than 700 people and serves over 500,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100. This isn’t a struggling startup but instead a mature business betting its future on a new architecture.
Superagent represents Liu’s bet on “multi-agent coordination”—a system where you ask a question and get not one AI assistant fumbling through sequential tasks, but a coordinating agent that deploys specialists working in parallel. “You’re not prompting an AI,” Liu explains. “You’re orchestrating a team.”
Here’s how it works: When you ask Superagent about expanding your athleisure brand into Europe (an exampl …